Interruption is a relatively common feature of our quotidian conversations in the United States. Interruption is not, however, simply a private affair; televised political debates frequently include numerous instances of overlapping speech. Mirroring private and public reality, contemporary novels commonly feature mid-sentence interruptions.
Interruption is so widespread nowadays that its presence in ancient Greek literature might seem unremarkable.
Interrupted speech was certainly not an unknown phenomenon in the ancient world, at least in some venues.1 For instance, Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes how, following a contentious debate between consuls and tribunes, one of the latter introduces a law specifically forbidding the interruption of a tribune.2 While interruption may have been a common feature of Greek and Roman political discourse, ancient Greek literature did not always reflect this reality.